She had four sisters and one brother, and they lived in the White River (Shirakawa) area around Seattle.

After Shiusaka's business failed, they decided to come to America, settle in the Seattle area, and try farming for a living.

Several states, but specifically Washington, used this status to deny Asians from owning property because they were "aliens ineligible for citizenship", which was a way to discriminate without reference to particular racial categories.

[3] In high school, Ruby said she felt no particular prejudice, but that later Japanese American children did.

[3] Ruby was somewhat religious, attending Sunday School at the First Methodist Church and also taking part in the Japanese Students Christian Association which met at the University YMCA.

Because of this, they wanted their children, the Nisei (of which Ruby was one), to learn Japanese language, culture, and religious traditions.

In 1929, Ruby's father, Shiusaku Hirose, was the president of the Thomas Japanese Association.

This building had twice the space for classrooms and was much closer to Thomas Grade School, that most students, including Ruby attended.

The conference created a Committee On Second Generation Problem, led by Roy Akagi, a PhD student and JSCA leader which included Ruby Hirose, who would have been entering her Senior year at University of Washington, as well as students from Stanford, Caltech, and Occidental College, and produced a report about this problem.

They were worried about how to respect and carry on their culture, but also wanted to be full-fledged Americans in an environment that was racially prejudiced and had a real lack of job opportunities.

It would turn out later when they were incarcerated due to World War II, many of the successful Issei and Nisei lost all of the businesses that they had built.

One of the proposed strategies for handling the vocational problem was to emphasize higher education, which Ruby certainly did, becoming one of the earliest Japanese American PhDs in the United States.

[15] During World War II, Ruby was connected with the Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology, University of Cincinnati.

[16] Three of Ruby's family members were incarcerated in the U.S. Government's concentration camps for Japanese Americans.

Mother Tome and sister Fumi were already deceased by the time WW II started and Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066.

Ruby Hirose died of acute myeloid leukemia in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 7, 1960, at the age of 56[17][18] and was survived by sisters Mary and Toki, and brother Kimeo.